HD disks are already being sold even in Wal-Mart of all places.
I figured that I would wait until after this coming Christmas season to decide which format was the winner, and buy that, but if Blue Ray isn't even going to exist, it will definitely lose. I am sure some people will see "HD-DVD" and say "Oh, I have an HDTV, I guess I'll get this one" and try to play it in their normal DVD players. Once they discover the difference, most of them will then decide that they should get an HD-DVD player, just because they have an HDTV. I really doubt that DVD-only players will sell much in five years, just like CD drives are almost impossible to find for computers now.
I am going to buy one or the other sometime after this coming Christmas. I figure that there will be adequate sales figures out there after the Christmas purchases, when a lot of both of these systems will be purchased, to determine which format is going to be the eventual winner. Unless that dual player thing actually comes to be, in which case I'll just buy that.
I think that is the real problem, the cost of dealing with "customer support" of this caliber isn't really worked in to the calculations.
I recently had to call Dell customer support, because a laptop I was using was shorting out.
My boss and I quickly diagnosed the problem, in under ten minutes. It would run from the battery, but would instantly power off whenever it was plugged in.
We swapped power supplies with an identical laptop: same results. We swapped batteries: same results.
It had to be either
(a) a short where the power supply plugs in to the computer, or
(b) a bad motherboard.
Either way, it needed to be sent in.
I am practically done with my MS in computer science, and my boss has a PhD in electrical engineering.
I think we are qualified enough to diagnose an electrical problem with a laptop.
Unfortunately, Dell customer support thought otherwise.
I got some Indian guy named "Jacob" on the phone. This very unique name for an Indian was probably so that your average American wouldn't have to try to pronounce his real name, but I thought it was kind of funny.
Not that I would have any trouble with his real name, since so many of my friends here at UMR are Indians.
"Jacob" felt the need to go through the entire script, which involved me going under my desk several times to unplug and replug the system, which wouldn't have any real effect anyway, if it was just the brick that had gone bad.
After about an hour of this, "Jacob" finally decided that my laptop's motherboard was bad.
But that wasn't the end of it.
I spent another hour trying to figure out who Dell thought owned the computer.
I knew who really owned the computer (my employer) but apparently they had mis-registered the thing to some random employee, that I found out about a week later had left the company a year ago.
As far as Dell was concerned, she was the laptop's owner.
When all is said and done, I probably wasted about four hours of my time, on the clock, dealing with Dell customer support.
Do you think that money was saved?
I make three or four times as much as what a tech support guy would make in America, who would have been able to get the thing taken care of in about fifteen minutes.
This has honestly got to be the worst experience I ever had calling customer support, with the sole exception of ATI back in 1999, who wouldn't even answer the phone for several days in a row, which was an international call to boot (Canada).
My company doesn't buy stuff from Dell anymore, it quit well before this call.
They moved to Alienware (although Dell just bought them out, so now they are buying from some local shop near the Omaha office now I think).
I haven't bought anything from ATI since, and probably never will.
I will be personally buying a laptop in the not-too-distant future.
It won't be a Dell.
Why yes, it is most definitely one of those two possibilities! Or both! Why I am joking, and I do work at Microsoft! Wait a minute, I'm Bill Gates! You sir have a brilliant deductive acumin.
Microsoft Office is what everyone uses in the real world. Anybody who actually cares to can create PDFs from Microsoft Word, just most people don't bother, because the Word.doc is more likely to be readable by the person than the PDF! And there is more to Office than just Word anyway.
Compared to Intel, their primary competitor, they are. If you run a fruit stand across the street from a full supermarket, then you are a niche vendor.
Compared to Intel, AMD is a niche vendor.
Intel's revenue last year was $38.83B, over six times the $5.85B revenue of AMD.
Intel makes everything AMD does, everything in your list, and a whole lot more too.
If I had $200,000+ to blow I might actually consider blowing it on a spaceflight, and sign a crazy wild waiver (the ones that say in 24pt font at the top, "IF YOU ACTUALLY SIGN THIS THEN YOU ARE CRAZY"), and get a pilot's license, etc. I wouldn't blow that on a boat, much less a boatride, even if it did win some stupid race. It is going into space that people would pay for, not SpaceShipOne(TM) in specific. Even if each flight cost $5,000,000, there are people who would pay $7,500,000 for it, which means profit.
His post is actually the only one in this entire discussion that is informative. Everybody else is just either whining about stupid shit (What about Senator McCarthy???? Back in my day we only had 2400 baud modems... etc.) or talking about stuff they don't understand that isn't even related. Of course, his answer is probably completely incomprehensible to 95% of the people reading it.
Actually, that would be most definitely not be 53GB of music.
The 186GB of video which doesn't exist actually isn't porn [for real!] but would rather be movies [with clothes and plots!] and TV shows, except for the fact that it doesn't exist, so it isn't that either.
Yeah.
Something like that.
I never understood why people save porn they have already seen.
It always seemed like saving an already-used kleenex for later.
Gold has been overhyped for the last 500 years.
If you believe that the dollar is collapsing, then you should move to another currency, and gold hasn't been a real currency for at least that long.
Oh, and move out of the United States too, assuming that you live there.
Not that it would really help: if the American economy collapses, it will bring the rest of the world with it.
I believe that the American economy is going to win in the long run though.
Actually, I remember actually having to calculate this in my astrophysics course for homework. If I remember correctly, if you could just magically snap your fingers and have an Earth-like atmosphere appear right now, about 90% of it would have escaped in a century or so. The escape velocity is too low, most of the atmospheric particles we are fond of (oxygen for example) have too high of a rms velocity.
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly these people aren't worried about justice, and instead are worried about winning the votes of emotional parents, the Security Moms.
Do we see now why letting women vote was a bad idea ... ;-)
It has been stongly suggested for months, and did not come as a suprise to anybody. I know this, and I have never owned a single share of Ford stock.
I would have to say that there is quite a difference between being black and being a pedophile.
You don't need units to do this one: Star Trek vs. Star Wars. Yay for mental masturbation! (mental vs. masturbation)
HD disks are already being sold even in Wal-Mart of all places. I figured that I would wait until after this coming Christmas season to decide which format was the winner, and buy that, but if Blue Ray isn't even going to exist, it will definitely lose. I am sure some people will see "HD-DVD" and say "Oh, I have an HDTV, I guess I'll get this one" and try to play it in their normal DVD players. Once they discover the difference, most of them will then decide that they should get an HD-DVD player, just because they have an HDTV. I really doubt that DVD-only players will sell much in five years, just like CD drives are almost impossible to find for computers now.
I am going to buy one or the other sometime after this coming Christmas. I figure that there will be adequate sales figures out there after the Christmas purchases, when a lot of both of these systems will be purchased, to determine which format is going to be the eventual winner. Unless that dual player thing actually comes to be, in which case I'll just buy that.
I think that is the real problem, the cost of dealing with "customer support" of this caliber isn't really worked in to the calculations. I recently had to call Dell customer support, because a laptop I was using was shorting out. My boss and I quickly diagnosed the problem, in under ten minutes. It would run from the battery, but would instantly power off whenever it was plugged in. We swapped power supplies with an identical laptop: same results. We swapped batteries: same results. It had to be either (a) a short where the power supply plugs in to the computer, or (b) a bad motherboard. Either way, it needed to be sent in.
I am practically done with my MS in computer science, and my boss has a PhD in electrical engineering. I think we are qualified enough to diagnose an electrical problem with a laptop. Unfortunately, Dell customer support thought otherwise. I got some Indian guy named "Jacob" on the phone. This very unique name for an Indian was probably so that your average American wouldn't have to try to pronounce his real name, but I thought it was kind of funny. Not that I would have any trouble with his real name, since so many of my friends here at UMR are Indians. "Jacob" felt the need to go through the entire script, which involved me going under my desk several times to unplug and replug the system, which wouldn't have any real effect anyway, if it was just the brick that had gone bad. After about an hour of this, "Jacob" finally decided that my laptop's motherboard was bad.
But that wasn't the end of it. I spent another hour trying to figure out who Dell thought owned the computer. I knew who really owned the computer (my employer) but apparently they had mis-registered the thing to some random employee, that I found out about a week later had left the company a year ago. As far as Dell was concerned, she was the laptop's owner.
When all is said and done, I probably wasted about four hours of my time, on the clock, dealing with Dell customer support. Do you think that money was saved? I make three or four times as much as what a tech support guy would make in America, who would have been able to get the thing taken care of in about fifteen minutes. This has honestly got to be the worst experience I ever had calling customer support, with the sole exception of ATI back in 1999, who wouldn't even answer the phone for several days in a row, which was an international call to boot (Canada).
My company doesn't buy stuff from Dell anymore, it quit well before this call. They moved to Alienware (although Dell just bought them out, so now they are buying from some local shop near the Omaha office now I think). I haven't bought anything from ATI since, and probably never will. I will be personally buying a laptop in the not-too-distant future. It won't be a Dell.
Why yes, it is most definitely one of those two possibilities! Or both! Why I am joking, and I do work at Microsoft! Wait a minute, I'm Bill Gates! You sir have a brilliant deductive acumin.
Microsoft Office is what everyone uses in the real world. Anybody who actually cares to can create PDFs from Microsoft Word, just most people don't bother, because the Word .doc is more likely to be readable by the person than the PDF! And there is more to Office than just Word anyway.
Compared to Intel, their primary competitor , they are. If you run a fruit stand across the street from a full supermarket, then you are a niche vendor .
You are actually considering OpenOffice a valid replacement of Microsoft Office?
What do you use then?
Compared to Intel, AMD is a niche vendor . Intel's revenue last year was $38.83B, over six times the $5.85B revenue of AMD. Intel makes everything AMD does, everything in your list, and a whole lot more too.
Recycle bin: cuz MS is more eco-friendly.
If I had $200,000+ to blow I might actually consider blowing it on a spaceflight, and sign a crazy wild waiver (the ones that say in 24pt font at the top, "IF YOU ACTUALLY SIGN THIS THEN YOU ARE CRAZY"), and get a pilot's license, etc. I wouldn't blow that on a boat, much less a boatride, even if it did win some stupid race. It is going into space that people would pay for, not SpaceShipOne(TM) in specific. Even if each flight cost $5,000,000, there are people who would pay $7,500,000 for it, which means profit.
His post is actually the only one in this entire discussion that is informative. Everybody else is just either whining about stupid shit (What about Senator McCarthy???? Back in my day we only had 2400 baud modems... etc.) or talking about stuff they don't understand that isn't even related. Of course, his answer is probably completely incomprehensible to 95% of the people reading it.
You really need to learn to use this invention called a paragraph. Please.
Both of my Sony Diskmans (the CD Walkman) had an "AVLS" switch. I never used it.
I never understood why people save porn they have already seen. It always seemed like saving an already-used kleenex for later.
I most certainly don't have a 300GB hard drive full of nothing but music and movies ... not at all ...
Gold has been overhyped for the last 500 years. If you believe that the dollar is collapsing, then you should move to another currency, and gold hasn't been a real currency for at least that long. Oh, and move out of the United States too, assuming that you live there. Not that it would really help: if the American economy collapses, it will bring the rest of the world with it. I believe that the American economy is going to win in the long run though.
... bla bla bla ... the sky is FALLING! ... bla bla bla ... so buy GOLD!
The median household income was $44,400 in 2004, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. You are better off than you think: be thankful.
We learned just fine from French history: we have yet to try to invade Russia in the winter.
Actually, I remember actually having to calculate this in my astrophysics course for homework. If I remember correctly, if you could just magically snap your fingers and have an Earth-like atmosphere appear right now, about 90% of it would have escaped in a century or so. The escape velocity is too low, most of the atmospheric particles we are fond of (oxygen for example) have too high of a rms velocity.